Linux users can use the
same hosts file that Windows users currently enjoy. Many of you may have known
this all along, but for those of you who don't, the Windows and Unix/Linux
operating systems use the same format for their hosts files.

Background
information on hosts files in Linux and Unix environments:

The hosts file in Linux (/etc/hosts) is a simple list of IP addresses and
the hostnames that they correspond to. Every hosts file in Linux should have
an entry for the IP address "127.0.0.1", with the name "localhost"
following it. This is also known as the loopback address. That same file may
also have an entry for your system name, unless you did not provide one during
installation.

This hosts file in Linux can store your system's name and IP address, and
it is important that you do not delete this information from your computer.
Deleting this information will damage your networking capabilities, which
means that you may not be able to access either your local network or the
Internet.

So unlike Windows, you will probably not want to simply copy the ad-blocking
hosts file directly over your existing hosts file. Instead, you should follow
these directions:

(1.)
Download the hosts.zip file from the Get Hosts File
page (or
click here) and uncompress it. Be sure the Hosts file is extracted or
saved as "hosts", without any file extensions, and not as something
like "hosts.txt".

(2.)
Find the Hosts file in the appropriate directory on your system.

For most Linux, Unix, Solaris, and BSD users, this will be in the /etc
directory, and you will need root access to do anything with it. (For BeOS
use: /boot/beos/etc/)

If this is not the case on your system, you will need to locate the existing
hosts file. If it is completely empty, you can replace it with
the ad-blocking file. If it is not empty, which should be the case, you will
want to be sure to save any information that is in there and/or make a backup
copy of your current hosts file.

If there are currently entries in your existing hosts file, then open the
ad-blocking hosts file. Copy the text from it to add to the bottom of any
existing text in your current hosts file. This will ensure that your current
entries will still work for you, and that you do not corrupt your network
properties.

Note: Be sure that your new Hosts file has the
same localhost entry (usually found on the first line) as the existing Hosts
file on your system, or you could have some problems. I would advise all users
to backup their existing files before switching to the new one. Be sure that
you transfer all other entries in your existing hosts file into the new file,
unless you are sure that you do not need them.

Do not change any other files you may find that have
the name "hosts" in them (such as hosts.deny or hosts.allow). You
should not need to change them for the ad-blocking to work.

(3.)
Try one of these solutions to begin using Hosts, or reboot if necessary:

(1.) Try logging out and logging back in first, which seems to work on a
redhat 7.1 test system at GDS.

(2.) Do a "killall -hup inetd" (without the quotes) while having
root privileges, which will restart the inetd process and should not require
a reboot.

(3.) In redhat, SuSE, and Mandrake, you can try opening a console window
and issuing these commands (without quotes):

"telinit 3", to switch from runlevel 5 to runlevel 3

"telinit 5", which will restart many daemones en route to putting
you back in runlevel 5 and the GUI

(4.) If none of those work, then you may have to reboot for the file to take
effect.

Many thanks to our readers for pointing some
of these methods out.

(4.)
Consider using eDexterJavaDog.

If you are experiencing browser slowdowns while using the Hosts file, consider
using eDexterJavaDog. It works in a similar manner to the Windows version
of eDexter. Visit the eDexter page on this site
for more information.

Gorilla Design Studio's support for Linux and Unix users is
minimal. Most people using those operating systems will be able to figure
this out. For those that can not, I will make some efforts to help you, but
there are a wider variety of possible Linux and Unix configurations than there
are in Windows, which means that it would take too much time to chase everything
down for every user. Good luck if you try this, and I hope that it works for
you.